


Across a Rainbow Bridge

by Untherius



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Family Issues, Gen, Ragnarok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long has the great battle of Ragnarok been foretold and nearly as long has the account been misunderstood.  As the Jotunn onslaught sweeps across Terran space, even a last stand at Sol holds an uncertain promise of victory and an even less certain future for humanity.  Neither Grand Admiral Ragnar Lothbrok, nor Commander Athelstan, nor Kaptein Gyda Ragnarsdottir had ever expected their lives and paths to turn out in the ways that they had.  But they could all have done worse...much worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across a Rainbow Bridge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lightebonydarkivory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightebonydarkivory/gifts).



Kaptein Ragnar Lothbrok felt the deck shudder beneath his boots. Creaks and groans rippled unnervingly through the superstructure.

“Damage report!” he barked.

“Severe cracking on four more outer hull plates,” replied Ensign Athelstan, “all on our starboard beam. New hull breeches on decks four through eight in section seven, dorsal deck one, and ventral deck fifty-seven. Part of deck seven is on fire. Outer door of starboard shuttle bay two is badly warped. Laser battery four, rail-gun battery seven, plasma battery eight, microwave emitter three, and missile battery one are down.”

There wasn't much that could be done about hull damage. That sort of thing would have to be handled in dry-dock. “Can we get those batteries back online?”

There was a pause. “Negative, sir. Not from here.”

Ragnar grunted. He still wasn't in range and already he'd lost a quarter of his firepower. At least he still had attitude control, and at sixty meters per second, battleships needed all the maneuverability their engineers could squeeze out of them and then some.

He tapped the information into his Command console, relaying it to Engineering for the already frantically overworked repair teams.

“Tactical, threat assessment?”

“Two remaining Isgeislir coming around for another pass.”

Ragnar snorted. Newtonian mechanics was a bitch. “Gunnery Control, this time, shoot at them when they are _not_ flying straight at us. I swear, we are taking as much collision damage as we are from weapons fire. Tactical, give me a resolution on Jormungand.”

A three-dimensional, translucent projection sprang up at the center of the darkened Bridge. The outer hull of Jormungandr shone bright blue in contrast to the matte black it actually was. The blue was overlain with infrared imaging in shades of red, orange, yellow, and white, showing both naturally warm areas such as propulsion and weapons, as well as damage such as hull breeches and possible systems overloads.

The vessel even looked like a serpent, or perhaps a dragon. Although as far as Ragnar knew, a dragon was precisely what Snorri Sturluson had had in mind when he'd originally written about Ragnarok in the Eddas.

Jormungandr was two hundred kilometers long, thirteen kilometers wide, and roughly cylindrical. Its outer hull was composed of matte black, overlapping plates of some indeterminate, but very strong and resilient material. Both thermal and ultraviolet imaging suggested that it might be an organic chitinaceous compound. The armor was broken only by several dozen sublight drive nozzles, hundreds of thousands of weapons emplacements, and the maws of two score hangars. In addition, the entire vessel bristled with myriads of oddly-shaped protrusions of unknown purpose.

Near its bow, four beam-weapon emitters gave the vessel the appearance of having eyes and nostrils. Those “eyes” and “nostrils,” however, had ignited Titan's atmosphere, incinerated Io, and effortlessly punched rather large holes in every defense platform and vessel that had been in Jormungandr's way. That had been just in the Sol System! Elsewhere, it had bombarded colonized worlds from orbit, reducing their biospheres to smoldering cindery ruins.

“Status?”

“Jormungand has sustained heavy damage to its outer hull,” said Athelstan. “Its inner hull is breached in multiple locations. An estimated one third of its weaponry is inoperative. At least one hangar is on fire. One port sub-light drive nozzle is venting plasma.”

“Trajectory?”

“At present, the vessel is on an insertion vector to enter high Earth orbit within four hours.”

“Show me the debris field and all vessels within ten kilometers of Jormungand.”

More holographic objects sprang into existence, thousands of them, each moving about in an intricate Newtonian dance as they collided elastically, or entered one another's gravitational spheres of influence.

Some of those objects were vessels attacking Jormungandr. Others were Jotunn escort ships. Many more were pieces of hull plating or other such fragments of disabled or destroyed vessels both Terran and Jotunn. They ranged in size from just a few centimeters to half a kilometer and represented every conceivable shape. Acquiring clear firing resolutions was going to be difficult for all combatants. Worse, the growing debris field was quickly becoming a second armor shell in favor of Jormungandr.

Ragnar studied the images as the distance closed, watching objects move and then light up thermally under impacts and weapons fire.

At last, “Sir, we're within weapons range.”

Ragnar felt a predatory grin spread across his face. “All weapons crews, fire at will! I repeat, fire at will!”

* * *

Gyda Ragnarsdottir knelt in the ruddy light bathing the bridge of Elding Kattegatar. A pair of dark eyes, the whites conspicuous in the dimness, held her own. Their owner tried to say something to her, his mouth not quite cooperating.

“Shh,” she soothed, “do not speak. This is a good day to die. Tonight, you dine in Valhalla, minn Kaptein.”

The man pushed something into her palm, squeezing it with his own. “Minn Kaptein...minir Kaptein,” he whispered. Then his grip relaxed, his hand slipping from hers.

For several moments, Gyda knelt on the deck. Then she pushed the man's lids closed and folded his hands across his chest. She gazed at the object the late Kaptein had given her, an amber Thor's-hammer amulet strung on a leather cord, serving a loosely-held tradition that identified the wearer as Kaptein aboard private vessels. She tied it about her own neck and rose shakily to her feet.

Gyda returned her attention to the holographic Tactical display in mid-space. It showed the Elding Kattegatar and several smaller vessels, most of them moving in ascending trajectories that would rendezvous with the ship in low Mars orbit. Overlain infrared imaging testified to the pounding each ship had endured over the last hour.

She also recognized several Jotunn Esgeislir, like the one that had just killed the Kaptein, at a little over a kilometer and closing. Most of them had already sustained damage, one of them trailing plasma from its propulsion manifold.

She watched as one image of a refugee transport and then another disappeared into the main cargo bay. One of the remaining craft sprang what looked like a coolant leak. That ship lost attitude control, veered sharply to starboard, then cracked in half moments later. The larger pieces briefly continued their upward arc before plunging through Mars' atmosphere in an orange haze, smaller fragments flung away in seemingly random directions.

She checked the status of the dorsal capacitors, then energized the port-side laser cannons. She trained on the closest attacker, then changed her mind. Destroying the one in the middle would turn it into a rapidly-expanding cloud of dangerous projectiles. That was normally a bad thing. But Jotnar flew in tight formation, and that made them vulnerable.

She discharged, watching the target area glow progressively brighter in the IR image. Despite how it had always been made to appear in the ancient moving pictures, she would never have seen a thing in a visible-spectrum view. Only with the help of computer imaging did she even know she'd hit the target, much less what sort of damage was being done.

It always took longer than one might have expected to melt through a Jotunn hull. She recalled some speculation during the early days of the war. Why, it had been frequently asked, did Jotunn ships typically have outer hulls composed entirely of ice? The best guesses had to do with several properties of ice: its high specific heat; its ability to absorb damage in lieu of whatever lay beneath it; and the ease with which it could be repaired or replaced.

In point of fact, analysis of the remains of every Jotunn craft studied showed that more than half the ship was comprised entirely of ice. How they actually operated at all was still anyone's guess.

A small cloud of dark red, barely visible against the blue image of the Esgeisl, puffed out from the impact point. The ship immediately began to list to starboard. Then it abruptly exploded. Fragments of ice and metal flew in all directions, pummeling the other Esgeislir in the formation.

One of them lost attitude control and spun downward into Mars' atmosphere. A second also lost control, raking the dorsal hull of one of the rising refugee ships before also plunging toward the planet. A third dropped out of formation, bound for the gods knew where. The last continued flying straight toward Elding Kattegatar.

Gyda toggled a rocket bank and checked the load. Only two left. Fortunately, the enemy craft was heading directly toward her, relieving her of the need to compute the dynamic geometry. Rockets had the most rudimentary of guidance systems, and Elding Kattegatar's were intended to deal with the sorts of close-range collision hazards typical of asteroid mining.

She'd still have to time it right. If she fired too soon, the Jotunn could either evade, or shoot down the rocket. Too late, and the fragment vector spread wouldn't be wide enough.

An orange pin-prick appeared on the leading edge of the Jotun vessel. Moments later, the bridge vibrated. Gyda was thankful yet again for the ship's thick hull plating. It wasn't nearly as good as the military-grade diamond lattices used on warships, but it was still more than capable of withstanding fast-moving rocks and, by extension, fast-moving chunks of ice.

Wait for it...wait for it...wait for it...she tapped _FIRE_. The rocket soon expended its limited fuel, its tail end cooling rapidly from orange to dull red. She held her breath. After what felt like forever, a yellow-orange flash erupted on the leading edge of the Jotunn ship. A moment later, the flash dulled to a bright red patch.

Gyda fired her remaining rocket. As she'd hoped, it flew through the hull breach opened by the first. The Jotunn ship exploded in a brief flash of bright yellow, fragments flying in all directions.

She didn't need to do the math to know that the net kinetic energy of the whole would be conserved by the pieces. But the sizes of the fragments, their vector geometry, and their new velocities mattered. Some of the pieces were still on their previous direct collision course. Others would also hit, but glancingly. Still others would miss entirely.

“COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT.”

She'd never learned just whose bright idea it had been to give the computer a female voice, but it was unrelentingly cheerful.

“Ja, ja, I know,” Gyda grumbled, and silenced the alert. Moments later, the bridge vibrated lightly as shards of the Esgeisl hit the hull. She held her breath as she waited for the hull breech alarms. When the alarm failed to sound, she relaxed. There was still most certainly hull damage, but they'd have to address that later.

A quick glance at the Tactical display showed three remaining refugee ships still on approach. Where were they putting them all? She knew the ship's interior was cavernous, but surely they were running out of space.

“Bridge,” said a disembodied female voice, “we're about full. Recommend preparing to break orbit.”

“Acknowledged,” Gyda replied. She leaned over to the helm, toggling the ship's thrusters, and initiating their start-up routines. A slowly-rising thrum gently vibrated the deck plating.

“Bridge?” came the voice again. “We're done here. Let's go.”

She glanced back at the Tactical display. Three ships remained.

“Keep those doors open,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, keep those doors open!”

There was a pause. “Who is this? Is this the stowaway girl?”

“That would be _Kaptein_ Stowaway Girl to you.”

The next pause was even longer. She watched the Tactical display as the first ship and then the second disappeared into the main hold. But third seemed to be faltering. The IR imaging confirmed that one of its thrusters was failing. Without full power, it wouldn't have enough sustained velocity to reach orbit.

Gyda grumbled under her breath, and took the helm. Her eyes scanned the controls. She'd watched the late helmsman as closely as she'd dared. Surely it couldn't be _that_ hard...could it? She grabbed the controls, tapping buttons here, relays there, one hand always on the attitude louvers. The ship slowly fell toward Mars.

“What the hell is going on up there? Are we losing altitude?” the voice demanded.

She ignored it. Instead, she brought the ship full about, easing more power into the thrusters to compensate for her controlled fall. She watched the distance to the failing transport close.

“You idiot! We can't take any more!”

“Those doors had better still be open!” she barked back.

“Who died and left you in charge?”

“Sven Olafsson.”

She heard cursing through the speaker. The image of the would-be-doomed ship vanished. That was followed by yet more cursing. She brought the thrusters up to full. The ship shook.

“We told you!” the voice snapped.

“Dump some mass,” she shot back.

“We wouldn't have to dump some mass if you hadn't flown us down here!”

“What about those twenty tonnes of metal we're still carrying?”

“We're going to need that!”

“Just do it!”

She heard more cursing. The engines whined and growled, but they maintained altitude at forty-three kilometers above Datum. Whether the updraft from Arsia Mons was helping, she didn't know. Nor did she particularly care. One thing was certain, they couldn't just hang there indefinitely.

“Bridge, we've having some problems down here. This ship isn't designed to operate so close to a gravity well. I thought you knew that!”

Gyda groaned. Her first day as Kaptein and already she was about to get everyone killed. It figured. Maybe she deserved to face the soul-sucking murk of Niflheim.

She scanned the Helm and Navigation panels, searching for something she could use. She tapped a few buttons, initializing the Bifrost drive startup routine.

While she waited, she plotted a course. There weren't many options. In fact, there was basically one: directly away from Mars. That would put them...near Tau Ceti...assuming they didn't slam into Neptune. No, no, that was no good. Tau Ceti was still a glowing sea of debris a hundred AU across and would be so for centuries to come. If she plotted a course tangential to the planet's surface, however...they could clear Sol's heliopause while avoiding its plane of elliptic. Yes, that would do nicely. She entered the data.

The timing would be tricky. There wasn't enough power to run both the sublight engines and the Bifrost drive. That normally wasn't a problem. But, as she'd been so recently reminded, Elding Kattegatar was not a heavy-lift vehicle.

She watched the power levels closely, praying that nothing would overheat.

“Bridge, what are you doing up there?” It was Engineering.

“Getting us out of here.”

After a pause, “You are _not_ doing what it looks like you're doing...are you?”

“If you mean using Bifrost to...”

“Are you insane?!”

“Do you have a better idea, Skallagrim?”

“Put the Kaptein on.”

“You're speaking to her.”

She heard Skallagrimr curse. “If you get us all killed...”

“Ja, ja, I'll be looking into Hel's terrible face. But if I don't...”

“I'll see what I can do about the power balance, but I can't work miracles.”

Several minutes later, Gyda watched the multicolored flickering light flooding through the external observation port. She smiled to herself. It seemed the gods had been merciful that day after all.

* * *

The deck shook yet again. Part of yet another control console overloaded in a shower of sparks, its operator cursing. Thin smoke drifted up in the ruddy light illuminating the Bridge.

“Bridge to Engineering!” Ragnar barked.

“Floki here,” came the reply.

“Tell me those warheads are ready.”

“Almost, Kaptein.”

“I need them now, Loytnant!”

“I told you, transferring antimatter is not like scooping iced sweet cream for children!”

“Kaptein,” said Loytnant Arnora, “I'm picking up a distress signal from Harm Friggar. Admiral Haraldson...sir, the ship's reactor is going critical...she's lost, sir.”

Ragnar exhaled heavily. There had long been friction between himself and the Admiral, going clear back to their Academy days. But the man had been an effective officer, especially in wartime. More to the point, however, they'd just been deprived of a battleship's firepower.

“Loytnant Arnora,” said Ragnar, “open a channel to all ships.”

After a moment, “Ready, Kaptein.”

“This is Kaptein Ragnar Lothbrok of the Reithi Thorar to all ships engaging Jormungand. Admiral Haraldson and Harm Friggar are lost. I am assuming command. Focus all firepower on the vessel's foreward port quarter. I say again, target Jormungand's foreward port quarter.”

He pushed another button. “Floki? Now would be a good time!”

“The first is ready. But, Kaptein...”

“Will it hold long enough to reach Jormungand?”

“Ja, sir.”

“So launch the damned thing!”

“Stand by.” Several moments later, “Torpedo away!”

“Tactical,” said Ragnar, “highlight the torpedo.”

A bright green dot appeared in the Tactical Display, moving rapidly toward Jormungandr. Ragnar watched it narrowly miss an indeterminate chunk of debris, then two partially disabled Jotunn Esgeislir and the slowly cartwheeling remains of the Israeli missile cruiser Plague of Boils.

A Jotunn destroyer barged through a small cloud of ice fragments. Its mass and engine wash perturbed the torpedo's flight path by slightly more than one degree. That was enough. The torpedo smashed through the edge of another piece of debris, sending it spinning out of control. It glanced off a large sheet of diamond plating, and crashed through the ruin of the Japanese carrier Yoshi Toranaga.

Some of the torpedo's antimatter reacted with the ship, the rest continuing along its trajectory, leaving a bright trail of matter-turned-energy in its path before what little remained slammed into Jormungandr just aft of one of its port-side beam emitters, breaching the vessel's hull.

The Jotunn destroyer plowed through more debris, then opened fire on Reithi Thorar. The vessel's image brightened as return fire chewed up its hull. It changed course, heading directly toward Reithi Thorar. Its bow brightened even more, and the ship cracked apart, fragments flying in multiple directions.

“COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT.”

Ragnar grunted. “Evasive action!” he yelled.

“Too late!” Athelstan yelled back.

The ship shook violently. Screeching and grating sounds filled the air. The Navigation panel exploded. The Tactical image flickered, then stabilized somewhat.

“Damage report!” said Ragnar.

“Most of the entire foreward quarter is now breached. We're venting atmosphere from those sections, as well as coolant and plasma from severed weapons conduits.”

Another alarm sounded. “We've lost attitude control!” said Athelstan.

Ragnar cursed. “Floki, forget the second warhead. We need attitude control back.”

“Stand by,” said Floki. A few moments later, “The good news is that I might be able to bring thrusters back online. The bad news is that they won't be reliable in any meaningful way, and anything foreward of the midships line is too heavily damaged.”

“Sir,” said Athelstan, “we're on a direct collision course with Jormungand. Impact in...forty-seven minutes.”

“Floki, you have thirty minutes!”

Floki's laughter seemed louder than it should have been. Not a good sign! Ragnar glanced at the flickering Tactical display of Jormungandr, viewed obliquely from twenty degrees off the bow.

Pieces of debris had lodged in its outer hull, protruding outward like strange growths, gases leaking out into space around the resulting breaches. Bright orange plumes of plasma vented from several critical points, making Jormungandr look like some grotesque flower. Myriads of small spots on its hull glowed red-orange from weapons damage, hull breaches, and miscellaneous ruptures. The vessel's bow yawned like the maw of a great serpent, the shapes of smaller ships and glows of plasma and magnesium fires visible inside it.

Ragnar cursed, then tapped the Command console. “All hands, this is the Kaptein. Abandon ship. I say again, abandon ship!” He toggled back to Engineering. “Floki! New plan...rig the reactor to go critical in fifty minutes.”

There was a pause, then more laughter. There was a certain amount of glee in it. “Will I get to watch?” Floki asked. Leave it to an Engineer to love a good explosion.

“Perhaps.” That was the best answer Ragnar could give. Surely his Chief Engineer knew that looking directly at an antimatter explosion would sear his retinas. And just as surely, Floki knew to watch the whole thing on a Tactical display, even if only as a recording.

Ragnar sat there while people milled about him. He transferred remaining firing control to his own console. Most of the foreward weapons arrays were literally gone, blown out into space by Jormungandr or one of its escort ships. All missile banks and reload stores had long been depleted.

He glanced up at an older man and raised an eyebrow.

“Tostig Hallasson, reporting for duty, sir!”

Ragnar recognized the man as the ship's head cook. His work was adequate, especially as naval cuisine went. “You should be abandoning ship, Loytnant,” said Ragnar.

“Kaptein, I am an old man. My days are numbered. If I leave, the Jotnar will snuff me out like a sheep, or else I will likely die of sickness or age. Please, let me have this one last chance to enter Valhalla.”

Ragnar considered that for a moment, then transferred Fire Control to another station. Ragnar pointed at it.

The man smiled and took his place without a word.

Ragnar glanced up at Athelstan. “Why are you still here?”

“Greater love has no man but this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”

“I gave you a direct order, Ensign.”

“That you did, Kaptein.” Athelstan held his gaze. Clearly, the man also meant, “And to hell with those orders.”

“I...we...would miss you,” Athelstan added. “Besides, I would not, for the wide world, miss seeing the expression on your face when we stand side by side before Saint Peter.”

Ragnar laughed. “Then tonight we shall know which of us is right, ja?”

“There is still time to repent.”

“You do not give up, do you, Warrior-Priest?”

Athelstan shook his head. “God will wait until your dying breath. We know that from the thief on the cross beside Christ.”

Ragnar chuckled. “Here were are, in our final hour, and still we debate these things.”

“Is there a better time?”

The Bridge shook again. Athelstan glanced down at his console. “One thing is certain, the forward sections will help absorb more damage.”

“Status on the escape pods?”

After several moments, Athelstan said, “All are away that can.”

“Prepare for ramming speed...” Ragnar tapped his console. “... _now!_ ”

The ship shuddered violently as the aft thrusters fired at full. The acceleration pushed him back against his chair.

“ _VALHALLA!_ ” bellowed Tostig.

Return fire from Jormungandr chewed at Reithi Thorar and Reithi Thorar spat back. More control and lighting panels burst about the Bridge, and the Tactical display died. Ragnar felt a blow to the head. His vision swam. He grinned as his consciousness slipped from him. He would drink mead in Valhalla, or else frolic in the meadows of Folkvangr.

* * *

The bowels of Elding Kattegatar were in complete pandemonium. Refugee ships rested on cargo platforms, disgorging their occupants onto the surrounding deck. Voices blended together into a rising clamor that echoed in the cavernous space.

Gyda stood there, mouth ajar, just staring at it all. What had Sven been thinking, making her Kaptein? But Kaptein she was and she had absolutely no idea what to do. Yet the gods had woven her path and she was determined to walk it.

Soft crying nearby cut through the background clamor. A small girl sat against the bulkhead at the near end of the platform on which rested the partially disabled ship that Gyda had saved at the last moment. The girl had her knees pulled up to her chest, head buried in her arms.

Gyda knelt down and gently placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. She looked sharply up, bright blonde hair half-obscuring the startled expression on her tear-stained face. Cornflower blue eyes bored into her own.

“Heilsa,” said Gyda. “Why do you cry, little one?”

The girl sniffed, then said, “I lost my mama and papa.”

Gyda tried not to flinch. “I am sorry. Shall we drink to their memory?”

A stricken expression washed across the girl's face. Tears welled up into her eyes. “They...died?” she wailed.

“What? Oh...no, no, no. I...don't know. You said you lost...oh.” She took a deep breath. “We will find them,” she said. “What is your name?”

“Hallveig Skeggisdottir.”

“I am Gyda Ragnarsdottir. How old are you, Hallveig?”

“Seven.”

Gyda sighed, then pulled the data tablet she'd been carrying out from under her arm. “Do you know what this is?”

Hallveig nodded.

“Do you know how to use it?”

She nodded again.

“I assume you know your runes?”

Another nod.

“Good. Now...this will help us find your mother and fathir. So I need you to stand right next to me and enter information into it while I talk to people. This makes you my official assistant. Do you understand?”

Hallveig nodded again.

Gyda stepped over to a panel on the wall, cleared her throat, and tapped on it. “Attention, everyone,” she said, her voice carrying throughout ship-wide intercom. “Excuse me.” The clamor continued. She took a deep breath. “ _SI-LENCE!_ ” she bellowed.

The sound died down quickly. “Thank you,” she said, not quite keeping the frustration from her voice. “This is Kaptein Gyda Ragnarsdottir. Welcome aboard Elding Kattegatar. We have won a great victory today against the Jotnar. Tonight, many of our mighty sword brothers and shield maidens drink and feast in the mead halls of Valhalla or frolic across the fields of Folkvang! For we who remain to speak their wordfame, today was not our day to die. We therefore have work to do, to continue following the paths the gods have laid before us.

“To that end, I need everyone's cooperation. I, or another member of the crew, will soon be making the rounds. I would like the pilot of each ship to collect the personal information of its passengers. This will help us keep track of everyone...” She glanced at Hallveig. “...and to reunite separated family members. Please remain where you are and we'll have this all sorted out soon.”

“ _Gyda!_ ”

Gyda spun around to face the Quartermaster, Helga Einarsdottir. “Ja?”

“What do you think you're doing?” she demanded.

Gyda crossed her arms defiantly. “Excuse me?”

“I said...”

“I heard what you said. Would you have used that tone with Sven Olafsson?”

“Well...”

“Of course not. Then why do you use it with me?”

“Because you have no business being Kaptein.”

“Sven seemed to think I do.”

“Kaptein Sven was...”

“He was what he was. I am Kaptein now.” Gyda had a sneaking suspicion that she was likely to have the same discussion over and over. She didn't have time for that and neither did anyone else. She stepped to the nearest panel. “This is the Kaptein. The crew will immediately report to the Mess Deck. That is all.”

* * *

Gyda stood in the middle of the Mess Deck, surrounded by the crew... _her_ crew. Every single one of them glared at her. All except for Hallveig, who looked up at her with a mixture of admiration, fear, and sorrow. Gyda placed what she hoped was a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder and spoke.

“As you all know by now, Sven has passed on. He now feasts and drinks in the mead halls of Valhalla. With his dying breath, he made me Kaptein.”

Skallagrimr snorted. “You are _not_ minn Kaptein,” he spat.

Gyda glared at her Chief Engineer. “Oh, really?”

He stepped forward, his posture reminding Gyda disturbingly of a charging bear. He stopped half a pace from her, towering over her like a Jotunn. “I should...”

Gyda pulled her seax--a birthday gift from her fathir as long as her forearm--from the sheath that hung from her belt and thrust it swiftly upward, the point barely pricking Skallagrimr's throat at the base of his jaw. He tilted his head back slightly. “You should what?” she demanded.

“Do you know how to use that?”

“What does it look like?”

“But do you have the nerve?”

Gyda pressed the tip into his skin, a bead of blood welling up. “Would you risk facing the murk of Niflheim to find out?” she retorted.

Skallagrimr chuckled slightly. “That...will not be necessary.” he said.

Gyda kept the knife where it was for a few moments, more to make a point than anything. “Then we at least agree on that.” She lowered the blade, deftly cleaned the blood from it, and returned it to its place.

Skallagrimr chuckled and stepped back. “I like you...Kaptein.”

Gyda smiled and nodded. “Now, if anyone else thinks I should not remain Kaptein, let me ask this. Who among you has the time or energy to do your regular duties _and_ those of Kaptein?”

Her question was only met with a round of exchanged glances and a long silence.  
“  
That's what I thought. Now, first, I would like to introduce Hallveig Skeggisdottir. Her parents are missing and until we find them, she is my personal assistant. As such, she is to be treated as a member of the crew.”

Gyda proceeded to introduce each member of the crew to Hallveig. She was surprised she remembered all their names. There were only twenty-three of them, but a few she'd only met in passing.

“Now,” she continued, “Hallveig, would you read what we have so far?”

Hallveig tapped on the pad and read off several items of business. They included repairs to the Bifrost drive and outer hull, room and board for all the refugees, additional security measures, expansion of the hydroponics bay and tilapia tanks, and general organization.

“Right,” she said, “we all have work to do. So, let's start with...” She could tell it was going to be a _very_ long day.

* * *

Hours later, Gyda flopped onto her back in the Kaptein's cabin... _her_ cabin...and groaned. She held her eyes closed, unsuccessfully willing away the memories of that day. She had a hundred questions, very few answers, and many of the ones she did have seemed to come down to one phrase: I don't know. She had no idea what she was doing and she was making it all up as she went along, desperately hoping she was convincing enough.

An inquisitive noise caught her attention. She opened her eyes to find Hallveig standing over her, just looking at her.

Gyda forced a smile. “You did well today,” she said.

“Where are my mama and papa?” Hallveig demanded.

Gyda exhaled heavily, then sat up. “I...don't know.”

“You promised to find them.”

Gyda nodded. “Ja. I did.” She gently took the tablet from Hallveig's hands and set it down on a table, then grasped the girl's hands in her own. “And we will. Until we do, I will take care of you, just as they did.”

The ensuing pause seemed to last forever. A smile broke across Hallveig's face. She abruptly launched herself at Gyda and wrapped her small arms tightly around her. Gyda returned the gesture.

After several moments, she pulled away, stood up, pulled open a closet door, and began to rummage through her inherited clothing. It was all leathers and woolens, far too large for her, and bore a powerful man-smell.

“If I'm going to be Kaptein,” she said, “I suppose I should at least look like it. And you should look like...like my sister...or dottir. What do you think?”

She looked back at Hallveig and winked. The girl giggled.

“Of course, I'll have to alter most...well, all of this.” She wrinkled her nose a little. “And deodorize it,” she added. She groaned. “I don't think I'll get much sleep tonight anyway.”

Gyda held one garment up to herself, then another, before tossing them onto her bunk, then grabbing a pair of scissors from a drawer.

“Why you?” Hallveig asked after a few minutes.

“Why me what?”

“Why did Olaf make you Kaptein?”

Gyda paused in her cutting. “It's tradition for a Kapein to personally pass command to his...or her...successor. I was the only one left alive on the Bridge when he died and as far as anyone knows, he's never told anyone who else he may have had in mind. If he did, why didn't he say so instead of making me Kaptein? Maybe he knew what I did, that everyone else is too busy doing their own jobs. And they're all really good at what they do, too.”

“Do you know how to be Kaptein?”

Gyda chuckled. “Nein. Ja. A little. I paid attention to my fathir, but...”

“Did he die?”

“What? Oh...um...I don't know. He's a stjarneskip Kaptein...of the battleship Reithi Thorar. Mother is Commander aboard the frigate Hval Uphiminn. But I don't know where they are or if they survived. Their orders were probably classified anyway. Even if they weren't, orders change, the tide of battle shifts...”

She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, tears leaking out despite her efforts. She quickly gave up, and just let them roll down her cheeks.

“So why are you here? Did they send you away to a safe place?”

Gyda blinked, then wiped her face. “Nein. I...I had a fight with Fathir and ran away. It was stupid, I know. If I hadn't...I'd probably be dead now. My parents, if they're alive, probably think I'm dead. That's another reason we have to find the fleet.”

“Is there one?”

Gyda shrugged, then turned her attention back to her alterations. “There' supposed to be. That was the plan.” She snorted. “Another benefit of being a Kaptein's dottir...overhearing things.”

“How are we going to find it, then?”

Gyda sighed. “I have no idea. There's supposed to be a rendezvous point somewhere between Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. But with the ship the way it is? It might take us a while. Hopefully, they'll wait long enough.”

“Do you think they're down there? My parents?”

Gyda put down the scissors, and pulled Hallveig close. “I don't know. I hope so. But if not, then we can all share our pain, and draw strength from the sharing.”

In one day, Gyda had acquired a ship, a crew, a daughter, and forty-seven thousand people, going from a Kaptein's runaway daughter to what amounted to Greifynja in less than hour. It still felt quite surreal, though she was sure the gravity of it all was sure to hit her like a comet some time in the next week.

* * *

Ragnar opened his eyes to an off-white light. As his vision focused, the light resolved into a ceiling, the illumination emanating from somewhere off to the edge of sight. He turned his head.

He was in a large room. Rows of occupied beds lined the walls, each bed with a familiar rectangular box mounted above it. Light shone from recessed areas where the walls met the ceiling. The floor was a dull sage-green color.

“Oh, good, you're awake.”

Ragnar turned toward the voice, and the equally familiar face of Athelstan smiled at him. Ragnar grunted. “So, my friend,” he croaked, “can you tell me why Valhalla looks like a stjarneskip infirmary?”

Athelstan's smile turned into a grin. “This isn't Valhalla.”

Ragnar groaned. “Then why does...heaven...look like a stjarneskip infirmary?”

“This isn't heaven either.”

“Your...what did you call it...purgatory?”

Athelstan shook his head.

Ragnar frowned. “Then whose...?”

“We're not dead.”

Ragnar felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward. “You interrupted a superior officer, Ensign. I also recall that you disobeyed a direct order. In the nineteenth century, you would have been flogged for that.”

“Then it's a good thing this isn't the nineteenth century.”

“Indeed. Because I would not have liked having to give that order. Now, can you tell me why we're in a stjarneskip infirmary and not floating in a debris cloud?”

“I am reliably told you should ask your son about that.”

Ragnar raised an eyebrow. “Bjorn?”

“Bjorn Jarnsitha, they call him now. He fought savagely to reach us. No weapon or debris shard could touch him. It was apparently quite impressive. I have been promised a look at his flight recorder. I have a feeling we will be impressed.”

Ragnar chuckled. “Ah, my boy!”

“Less of a boy and more of a man as of late, I should think.”

“And it was he who pulled us from the wreckage?”

Athelstan nodded. “When you...we...were knocked out...I do not remember much. Only that when I first awoke, we were both strapped to the deck of some other ship, one with negligible inertial dampening and no artificial gravity. Then I passed out again from the gee-forces and woke up here.”

Ragnar sat up slowly. His head hurt. His vision swam briefly, then settled down.

“You should probably not be up yet, my friend.”

Ragnar blinked his eyes, then looked around. “Where are we anyway? Besides the obvious, I mean.”

“Aboard the Orka Mjolnir...new flagship.” At Ragnar's raised eyebrow, Athelstan continued. “You were unconscious for a week. A lot has happened.” He handed Ragnar a data pad. “You have homework...Admiral.”

Ragnar looked sharply at Athelstan.

“This is the Apocalypse,” said Athelstan, “or Ragnarok, depending on how you look at it. Do the math...sir.”

Athelstan nodded at the pad. Ragnar turned his attention back to it, scrolling through screen after screen of reports, senior officers' logs, video files of everything from news recordings to flight data, manifests, list of known surviving vessels and the names of their crew, and so on.

“Well,” he said after some time, “I suppose it is a good thing I have slept so long, ja?”

Athelstan grunted, then held out a hand. Ragnar grasped it firmly. Athelstan thumped him on his back. Ragnar coughed.

“And that, my friend,” said Athelstan, “is why the doctor has not cleared you for regular duty yet.”

“Who _is_ the doctor on this ship?”

“Aslaug.”

Ragnar blinked.

Athelstan smirked. “If you would read your reports, you would know that and more. And now, if you don't mind, I am on duty.” Athelstan turned and limped toward the door.

“Athelstan?”

He looked back over his shoulder.

“Am I to understand that the Doctor cleared you for duty with a limp?”

“I am hale as can be expected. There are many others far worse off than I. They need the bed spaces and the ship needs my hands and eyes.”

“Can you...

“Do my duty?” He chuckled. “I was assigned minions.”

Ragnar raised an eyebrow. “You get minions?”

“As Chief of Security? Of course.” Athelstan grinned, then left the room.

It was only then that it dawned on Ragnar that Athelstan had been wearing a Loytnant's insignia. His friend was right about one thing: a lot had happened and Ragnar really needed to catch up. He lifted the data pad, found the entries corresponding with his rescue by Bjorn, and began reading.

* * *

“Admiral's Log, April fifteenth, twenty-three eight-five.

“The collective moods of the ship's crew and passengers continue to improve. Weeks of planning and preparation will soon pay off...we hope.

“The upper observation deck of Orka Mjolnir is standing-room only, even though there is not much to see but stars. Above, Milky Way stretches across the sky, its spiral disk discernible even at this oblique angle, a strange sight for us who are used to seeing it from within the Orion Spur. To port, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud to starboard appear as conspicuous smudges against the star-field. Ahead, Andromeda and Triangulum Galaxies appear as discs the size of salmon eggs. Running lights of thousands of stjarneskipir blink across a hundred thousand cubic kilometers of space.

“Thousands...seven thousand, four hundred, fifty-three to be precise, with a few more trickling in every day. But out of what could have been tens of millions? Humanity stands upon a blade's edge.

“For that reason, twenty vessels go forth this day. Surely it is no accident that this date, which would have been early spring in Scandinavia, corresponds also with the season of fjords' thaw when my distant ancestors sailed forth across the North Sea.

“Commander Leif Eriksson...with heavy cruiser Helgrind, French battleship Guillotine Rouge, Welsh missile cruiser Ar Hyd a Nos, Australian destroyer Franz Joseph, Arab gas tanker Sharm al Sheikh, Canadian heavy freighters Salmon-Spawn and Frenchie Bear-Paw, and New India Trading Company freighters Black Pearl, Flying Dutchman, Jack Sparrow, and Shipwreck Cove...sets out to the Large Magellanic Cloud.

“Kaptein Lagertha Ingstad...with the frigate Hvalr Uphiminn, destroyer Narhval, Welsh cruiser Cymru yn Codi, Spanish destroyer Isle de Muerta, heavy freighter Vet Arendalar, Arab gas tanker Sitta Oktubri, and Centauri Consortium freighters Pollux, Makemake, and Rigil Kent...sets out for Small Magellanic Cloud.

“Their mission is to seek knowledge and needed supplies, and return with them.

“Twin multicolored flickers signal the departures. Unlike the sailing of longships in the Age of Sail, it is anticlimatic. And so we wait, drifting toward Andromeda at fifty kilometers per second.”

* * *

“Admiral's Log, September twenty-second, twenty-three eighty-eight.

“Kaptein Ingstad and Commander Eriksson both returned today. They bring both good and bad news.

“The good news is that their ships' holds are bursting with much-needed supplies...water, methane, carbon dioxide, and ammonia ices...compressed hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases...silica rocks...sulfides...and more.

“The bad news is that there are no available worlds in either galaxy. The few habitable worlds already support pre-industrial civilizations, and another two are home to advanced civilizations, one of which fired upon our ships. Several others showed signs of having been destroyed by nuclear wars, ecological collapse, impacts from large itinerant bodies, or stellar flares. Analysis of five supernova remnants suggested that two of them had obliterated habitable worlds. In some places, our ships encountered the lifeless hulks of alien spacecraft, some capable of FTL travel, others long-duration cryo-transports. One wonders what their stories would have been had they lived.

“At one cluster of stars in Large Magellanic Cloud, clear evidence of a Jotunn invasion was found in the form of adrift vessel fragments, supporting early suppositions that the Jotnar came to Terran space from somewhere south of Milky Way.

“There have been no new arrivals from Milky Way for over a year. We can only conclude that no one else has survived Ragnarok. So it is with heavy hearts, and much argument, that we strike out toward Andromeda.

“While our ships conduct previously on-hold damage repairs, expand hydroponics capacity and so forth, our teams will begin construction of the mobile space telescope Syn Heimdallrar. It is an ambitious project. For the first time, a large telescope and a Bifrost-capable vessel will be combined into a single unit.

“The telescope's main lens is to be two kilometers in diameter. Special equipment similar to that used to build the platform-based orbital Martian half-kilometer telescopes is under construction. When completed, it will see further than ever before, even beyond the Local Group. It will be the most important tool we have for finding a habitable world we can call our new home.”

* * *

“Admiral's Log, September nineteenth, twenty-three ninety-four.

“The fleet drifts past the galactic north pole of the Andromeda-I dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Ahead, Andromeda-II and Andromeda-III are visible as tiny smudges. To starboard, Triangulum appears as it would were it drawn on a large round shield attached to the outer window glazing. Reddish, attenuated dust clouds and the older, red-tinged stars within them contrast with the blue-white of the main body of spiral arms, making Triangulum appear to be a living thing. To port, Andromeda fills much of the sky, its blue-white concentric rings blazing at us like Othinn's eye.

“We await the return of three dozen scouting vessels sent to investigate promising systems bearing observed exoplanets. Tensions are high with the waiting, which cannot end soon enough. Then a merciful few more weeks of travel to, the gods willing, our new home.

“That will come none too soon. The years of our exile as we drift through intergalactic deep space have taken their toll on everyone. Humans were never meant to inhabit the void between worlds. Though it is hard to say whether that fact, or the impact of all we've lost, has had the more profound effect on us.

“We hold ourselves together with story, song, and art, much like the ancient ancestors of those inhabiting the high latitudes of Earth did during their long, dark winters. But that cannot keep us going for much longer. We need a new homeworld and we need it soon.”

* * *

Grand Admiral Lothbrok thumbed through the entries on his data pad, the runes scrolling down the screen alongside images of the planetary systems his teams had explored. At length, he looked up and across the projector space at the faces of those gathered in Stellar Cartography.

They were the usual suspects: Rear Admiral Rollo; Vice Admiral Ingstad; Kaptein Eriksson; Kaptein Skipsmithr; Kaptein Siggy; Commander Athelstan; Loytnant Thyri Haraldsdottir; Loytnant Jarnsitha; Loytnant Thorunn.

“Shall we get started, then?” he said.

He watched the first image spring to life in the mid-space projector in translucent real color, unlike the muted blues and IR data of Tactical displays. A binary star with a single gas giant in orbit through the outer edge of the stars' habitable zone, the planet bearing three large moons and dozens of smaller ones. After several moments, the image zoomed in on the gas giant and its satellites.

“This world,” said Rollo, “designated Em-Thirty-One BG One, is in Andromeda's outer ring. It has an orbital period of two-point-seven standard years. Its orbit is noticeably elliptical and passes outside the habitable zone for a period of three standard months. Each of the moons spends slightly more time outside that zone during their own orbits. Most of those moons are rocky or icy. Of the three largest moons, two are about the size of Mars, the third slightly larger than Earth. Their atmospheres are barely breathable. To try to establish anything more than a science or mining colony on any of them would be foolhardy.”

One by one, each person present briefly discussed the worlds they'd surveyed as the images changed. There had been a great many of them at first. Syn Heimdallrar had detected thousands of planetary systems. It had taken the specially-assembled team of astronomers and astrophysicists months to narrow down the list to hundreds to be examined further. After that, they trained the telescope on each of those and trimmed the list down even further. From there, it had been necessary to send exploratory vessels to glean all the pertinent details.

Of the two hundred and thirty-seven systems explored, roughly half were binary stars with gas giants and only half of those had moons. All of those were uninhabitable and not presented.

Several—thirteen in Andromeda and five in Triangulum—supported sentient populations, two-thirds of whom had entered their industrial ages, seven of whom were space-faring, and two of whom were embroiled in an interstellar war. Other than the two at war, there was no discernible evidence that any of them knew the others existed.

The remaining worlds presented were mostly consistent with what earlier explorers had found in Milky Way two centuries before. Ragnar knew the salient variables: distance from star; eccentricity of orbit; axial tilt; rotational period; mass; atmospheric composition; presence of liquid water; number of moons and their masses and orbital characteristics. Yet the variation constantly astounded him. Most of those worlds could have supported small human populations, others easily made habitable with some modest terraforming efforts over a couple of generations. The human race very well could have spread out across two galaxies and in some ways, that might actually have been preferable.

Loytnant Bjorn Jarnsitha practically vibrated as he began his own presentation. Ragnar understood his son's excitement, having read the reports himself.

“Last, but certainly not least,” said Bjorn, “we have this system near the edge of Triangulum.”

The image showed a single star system with seventeen planets.

“Em-Thirty-Three LS. The star, in the main sequence, remains unnamed. Its habitable zone is comparable to Sol's. Two rocky worlds orbit close to the star. Outside of those is a large, attenuated asteroid field. Analysis suggests that it was once a planet roughly the size and composition of Mars. The third planet, also Mars-sized, has an eccentric orbit. It has a much thicker atmosphere than that of Mars, with substantially more water vapor, although detectable surface water is combined to a small scattering of tiny high-latitude seas. Bit its orbit makes global climate highly erratic.

“The several planets outside the habitable zone are mostly small gas giants with icy or rocky moons. Two planets are Earth-sized with breathable atmospheres, but too far from the star to support a civilization, and one of those has an orbit inclined at thirty-seven degrees. Another Mars-like planet orbits near the outer edge of the extended habitable zone.

“But it's what's within the habitable zone that I think will interest everyone. There are three planets. Two orbit near the inner edge of the habitable zone at roughly one AU, both at Trojan points. One is completely covered by a very shallow sea. But the tidal action of its moon generates tsunami-like waves that sweep across the planet. The other is what you might call a global prairie. The planet has a thick, very high-moisture atmosphere. The only surface water appears to be marshes and broad, slow-moving, possibly ephemeral, rivers.

“The third planet orbits near the inner edge of the extended habitable zone at one point seven AU. It is a gas giant one point three Jupiter masses. It has a broad ring and eighty-seven moons. Four of those moons are Earth-like, each of them having between one and three moons of their own. None of them are inhabited by sentient beings.

“I recommend having all additional data available to anyone who wants to see it. I also strongly recommend moving there.” Bjorn was grinning by the time he'd finished his presentation.

Ragnar smiled broadly. “And I concur. Are there any questions?”

“Only one,” said Thorunn. “How soon do go?”

Ragnar chuckled. “Immediately! Loytnant Jarnsitha, relay the coordinates to all ships. We depart in one hour. Unless anyone else has anything else, we're dismissed.”

* * *

“Tell me, Athelstan. Why do the gods hate me so?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do they give with one hand and take with the other? With one hand, they snatch me from what would have been certain death, spare my son, my wife, and you. They make me Grand Admiral, and very likely also Konung. And they lead us to this beautiful world. Yet with the other, they take my daughter, slaughter my people, destroy my homeworld, and all but obliterate human civilization as we know it.”

“You still cling to the wrong gods.”

“Do I? Yours razed Sodom and Gomorrah down to the last woman and child, unleashed ten plagues upon Egypt, and commanded Moses and Joshua to commit genocide in the land of Canaan. Oh, and let us not forget the Great Deluge that rearranged the surface of Earth and obliterated four billion people. I fail to see how your God is much better than ours.”

“We only have to deal with one.”

“Three. Fathir, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

“That is a technicality.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps all of our gods are real. Yours, mine, the ones still worshiped by some of the Scots and the Irish, the Hindu gods, the Greco-Roman ones.”

Athelstan shook his head, a motion Ragnar saw more in his peripheral vision. “That is not possible.”

“Is it not? Are you sure?”

“Live a good life. If there are gods, and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

“Who said that?”

“Marcus Aurelius, supposedly.”

Ragnar grunted. “That is good advise. Yet it still does not answer my question. Why do the gods hate me?”

“Perhaps you look too closely at what you have lost and not closely enough at what you still have. Most of the people we brought here escaped with little but the clothes on their backs. To them, this is everything. It is paradise.”

Ragnar gazed out the view-port upon the blue-green world and the orange-and-white gas giant beyond. One of its moons gleamed off to port, and other moons of the gas giant twinkled in sunlight, the edge of the ring glimmering. It was indeed beautiful. No one had ever encountered anything like it in Milky Way or either of the Magellanic Clouds. Was it any wonder they had named the system Gimle?

“Admiral to the Bridge!” came a familiar disembodied voice.

“What is it, Ensign?” Ragnar replied.

“Sir, we're detecting a Bifrost echo seven clicks off our port beam. It's...a little erratic.”

Ragnar exchanged a quizzical look with Athelstan. “On my way,” he said.

Several minutes later, he stepped onto the Bridge, Athelstan on his heels.

“Admiral on deck!” said an Ensign.

Other crewmembers reflexively began to salute, but immediately returned their attention to their work. There'd been a time when failure to salute a superior officer was punishable by flogging. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, had seen a paradigm shift that had continued well into the era of deep space exploration and colonization. The War and subsequent Exodus had finished it. Too many things could change too quickly, things that required constant vigilance, things that could doom a crew in moments.

A familiar alarm filled the air. “COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT.”

“Report!” he said.

“Sir, a large vessel just dropped into normal space in the vicinity of that echo. It's on a collision course.” A Tactical image leaped up in mid-space showing the vessel in question. It was large and lumpy, but definitely of Terran origin. Runes alongside the projection indicated a length of one point four kilometers and a width of six hundred meters. It was also tumbling.

“Ragnar,” said Athelstan quietly, “if a ship that size hits us...”

“Loytnant, hail them,” said Ragnar.

A few moments later, “No response, sir.”

“Stand by on weapons.” Ripping the other ship apart, particularly at such close range, wouldn't negate the collision hazard, of course, but it would reduce it to smaller pieces.

Then, “Wait.” He peered at the image. He still didn't recognize the ship's configuration. He thought he saw elements of an asteroid miner with seemingly random additions having been welded onto it. But the flickering IR signatures distributed about its hull strongly suggested its crew were desperately trying to stabilize it.

He pointed at it. “What do you make of that?”

“It looks like erratic thruster fire to me.”

Ragnar nodded.

“Sir, vessel is at two clicks and closing fast.”

Ragnar raised his hand. “Gunnery control...”

Several points on the ship flared up in bright orange and its rotation slowed, first along its Y axis, then along its Z. The orange points spiked to yellow, the engine nozzles at the aft end bleeding to white. The whole thing slowed, then came to a halt two hundred meters away.

The warning alarm changed. “PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT.”

“...stand down,” Ragnar finished.

* * *

Kaptein Gyda Ragnarsdottir grunted. She clenched her stomach, willing her latest meal to stay down. “Engineering!” she yelled. “What is going on down there?”

“We fell off Bifrost early,” replied Skallagrimr.

Gyda rolled her eyes. “What, again?”

“We hit a gravity well.”

“Tell me something I don't know! Why did we not see it coming?” she demanded.

“Long-range sensors are out of calibration...again.”

“Of course they are,” she growled. “If one more thing on this ship breaks down...”

“And we've lost attitude control.”

“Oh, really?” she said sarcastically. “Do you think so?”

There might not have been any up or down in space, but there sure was centrifugal force. At the moment, that force was very effectively making things miserable for everyone aboard. Two other people on the Bridge were already casting up their accounts on the deck plating.

A familiar cheery computer voice filled the air. “COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT. COLLISION ALERT.”

Gyda brought up the holographic Tactical display. It flickered, momentarily displaying something large. She slapped the side of the console. The image flickered again, then vanished. She cursed.

“Engineering! Stabilize this thing!”

“We're working on it!”

“Well, work faster! We're seven kilometers from a collision hazard and closing fast. We have less than a minute to regain control before we hit it. I don't know about you, but I don't think today is a very good day to die. And I am sure all the people below me would agree.”

“It's the conduits again...”

“Well, how did you clear them last time? I swear, if we have rats in the lines again...”

She alternated her attention between the temperamental Tactical display and the engine status on the Helm panel, willing her stomach to hold onto its breakfast.

After what felt like forever, amber indicator lights changed one by one to flickering and then solid green. She tapped on the screen, breathing a sigh of relief as the thrusters fired. The deck shuddered violently, metal groaning somewhere, but the ship's rotation slowly stabilized. She thanked the gods the gyros still functioned. She still had nightmares about those times she'd had to manually coordinate thruster fire.

She flared up the main sublight engines briefly, the ship shuddering to a halt relative to the imminent collision hazard.

The alarm changed. “PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT.”

“Ja, ja, ja.” Gyda silenced the alarm. She let out a heavy sigh of relief as both gravity and her stomach returned to as close to normal as they'd been in recent memory.

“Mothir?” said Hallveig. “You should come look at this.”

Gyda strode over to where her adopted daughter stood craning her face up into one of the small observation portals. She looked through it herself and blinked.

“Do you recognize that?” the girl asked

“Ja. It's diamond hull plating...military grade.”

“Are you sure?”

Gyda nodded. “Very. If the rest of us had armor matrices half as good, Ragnarok would not have been such an unmitigated disaster.”

Hallveig blinked. “And we almost hit it.”

Gyda chuckled ruefully. “That we did, minn dottir.” Then, “Engineering!”

“Kaptein, I have bad news and worse news.”

“Skallagrim, is the reactor going critical?” 

“Nein. Not yet, anyway.”

“Good, because I've identified that collision contact.”

“And?”

“We're holding less than two hundred meters from the outer hull of a Terran warship.”

She heard a curse, but let it slide.

“Have Hilda and Thora prep Huginn Thrir.”

“You're going over there?”

“Of course I'm going over there! In case you haven't noticed, we could use a few replacement parts.”

“A few?”

“At this point, I'd almost bed her Kaptein for a couple of CO2 scrubbers, a Type-Two secondary inversion coil, and a roll of the Ribbons of Saint Tenacious.”

“Please tell me you'll be armed.” The concern in his voice was palpable, as always.

Gyda smiled to herself. She still didn't know when she and Skallagrimr had fallen in love. But she'd never forget the day they'd abruptly kissed in the lift, only to be abruptly discovered by Hallveig. The look on the girl's face had been priceless. In fact, she still teased them about it. But after that, they'd really had little choice but to marry.

“Oh, please," she said. "I hardly go to the head unarmed, much less anywhere off-ship. You know that. I'll take your latest in the lift.” She turned to a woman struggling up from the deck. “Ithunn...”

“Go,” she said. “We will recover. Besides...cleaning up will give us something to do up here.”

Gyda nodded, the beckoned to her daughter. “Hallveig, you're with me...and bring your brother.”

* * *

“Admiral, a small craft has exited the mothirskip.”

“Hail them,” said Ragnar.

After a few moments, “No response, sir.”

Ragnar frowned. “Open Shuttle Bay Two.”

“Sir?”

“Ragnar,” said Athelstan, “are you sure that's a good idea? We don't know who they are or what they want.”

“Which is why I want you to take a security detail and meet them.”

Athelstan held Ragnar's gaze for several moments. “Ja, sir. But for the record, I think this is a bad idea.”

“I will be sure to note that in my log.”

Athelstan left the bridge and Ragnar leaned forward, peering at the images.

The smaller craft was of a type common in the private sector. It was nearly cylindrical, roughly three meters in diameter and twenty meters long. Most ships used them for non-atmospheric in-system flights. The image of the one slowly approaching Mjolnir showed heavy hull damage that had been repeatedly repaired, and an engine with a slow coolant leak.

The motherskip was an enigma. It was roughly ovoid, with strange humps, bumps, and bulges. Ragnar could make out scores of weapons emplacements, but only a few were even on standby.

“Who are you?” he wondered aloud.

He continued to watch the IR imaging flicker across the vessel. If its Kaptein was up to something, it was far from obvious. That may have been the whole point. Still, there was nothing to suggest any nefarious purposes were afoot. Anyone who would dare try anything so close to a carrier vessel was either exceedingly brash to rival even Loki, or downright insane.

“Admiral?” Athelstan's voice yanked Ragnar out of his musing.

“Yes, Commander?”

“Ragnar, you...you should come down here.”

There was something in the voice that gave Ragnar pause. “What is it?” he asked.

“Let me put it this way...you _want_ to come down here. Trust me.”

Ragnar frowned. “On my way. Loytnant, you have the conn.”

Several lifts and corridors later, Ragnar rounded a corner near Shuttle Bay Two. Laughter almost brought a pause in his swift pace. Laughter? That was odd indeed. He'd barely gone a half-dozen paces into the bay when he stopped in his tracks.

Across from Athelstan and his three-person security team stood two young women. Both wore wool and leathers, their hair done up in fighting braids.

The shorter of the two looked to be about twelve, plus or minus a bit, the age Gyda had been when last he'd seen her all those long years before. She wore a pulse pistol on one hip, a short blade on the other. A sturdy leather satchel hung above the blade's hilt. The muzzle of a pulse rifle protruded over her left shoulder, a short spear over her right. She also held a baby in a sling.

The taller woman caught his attention like nothing had since he'd first laid eyes on Jormungandr. Like the girl, she wore a pulse pistol on one hip, but a full-length sword on the other. A seax handle stuck out from the small of her back, the blade of a war axe visible over her shoulder. Another seax was fixed to her knee-length boot. Those were only the weapons he could see. Her face, however, that he would never forget. The last vestiges of soft girlhood had faded from it, leaving the sharper features that, along with the smile on her lips, so eerily reminded him of his first wife.

Tears rose unbidden to his eyes. He closed the remaining space between them, and caught her in an embrace so hard, he might have broken her.

A rustle of fabric, leather, and metal came from his right.

“Stand down, Hallveig,” Gyda whispered. “He is my fathir.”

“Oh,” said the girl.

After several more moments, Ragnar released his daughter to hold her at arm's length. “Let me look at you.” She looked more or less like he'd always thought she would once she'd grown up. Except for a small scar across her forehead, one on the tip of her nose, another on her chin, and a third on her cheek that ran up into her hairline. And there was a certain hardness in her eyes. Clearly life had been tough on her. “You look so much like your mother,” he said at last. “I have missed you so much!”

“Me, too,” she said. “So, Admiral, is it?”

Ragnar chuckled.

“I hope,” said the girl, “this means you will not be bedding the Kaptein in exchange for what we need.”

Ragnar nearly choked. He looked at her.

“Fathir,” said Gyda, “I would like you to meet Hallveig Skeggisdottir. She's my assistant...and my daughter.”

Ragnar looked sharply at Gyda. “But you are...”

“Not old enough to have a child her age? She is adopted. It is a long story, one I hope to have time to tell. The baby, on the other hand, he is mine. Egill Skallagrimson.”

Ragnar peered at the infant. He thought he saw some of himself in his grandson's face, just as he remembered from when Bjorn had been an infant. He smiled. “Did you know I would be here?”

“Nein.”

“Then do I want to know why it is you brought a baby with you?”

“First, everyone is too busy keeping the ship together. Second, I thought Egill's presence would help diffuse any unpleasantness. Even if this ship had been taken by pirates or mutineers, it would have been...well, less likely that they would have had their way with either of us.”

“Would you really have bedded a ship's Kaptein in exchange for supplies?”

Gyda's smile faded. She drew a breath, held it, then let it back out. “Hallveig? Would you begin reading the acquisitional manifest?”

Hallveig pulled a data tablet out of her satchel tapped on it a few times, then began to read. “Four Type-Two secondary inversion coils. Eight CO2 scrubbers, model Triton-H5-P38. Twelve rolls of the Ribbons of Saint Tenacious. Two sheets of plexiglass, each at least four square meters. Three tubes of plexiglass caulking. One tonne hulled quadro-triticale. Eight spools Type-Three copper solder. Four...”

A loud noise interrupted Hallveig. All eyes turned toward the shuttle. Something lay on the floor near the vessel's bow, rocking back and forth. Gyda pressed two fingers to her forehead and groaned.

“Was that...?” said Athelstan.

“Primary buffer panel,” Gyda groaned.

Hallveig tapped furiously on the tablet, apparently adding that to what Ragnar was sure was a rather exhaustive list.

“Commander,” said Ragnar, “I want a repair crew in here immediately.”

Athelstan stepped briskly to the nearest panel, pressed several buttons, and began issuing orders. A couple of minutes later, he returned and dismissed the security detail.

“Commander?” said Gyda. “You two seem to have done well for yourselves.”

“It was more a matter of there being personnel gaps and us being available to fill them,” said Athelstan.

“And a healthy dose of ambition,” added Ragnar. He didn't usually like to admit that, although Athelstan had been an influence on him. “How long is that list of yours?”

“Long,” said Hallveig.

Ragnar held out his hand. “May I?”

Hallveig looked at Gyda. She nodded and the girl surrendered the tablet.

Ragnar scrolled down...and down...and down. At length, he let out a low whistle and returned the tablet. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”

Gyda blinked. “Wh...what?!”

“It means...”

“I know what it means!” she snapped. “If you don't have the parts, just say so. Surely you have _some_ of what is on that list.”

“Of course we do. Much of it.”

“But...why?” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I will do anything. I will bed Athelstan...and your whole crew. Just...”

“Are you truly that desperate?”

“It is bad over there. Very bad. We...cannot keep flying. It is all we can do just to hold her together. That last jump...was our last. There are forty thousand people aboard that ship. Please...”

Ragnar placed a hand on Gyda's shoulder and smiled. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Ragnar spun on his heels, barely managing to hide the grin. He took no pleasure in the sheer panic in his daughter's voice. Yet he just couldn't resist the opportunity to surprise her. Surely she would forgive him. And if there really were that many people aboard that ship, then Gyda would return to them a hero.

“Why?” Hallveig whispered. “Why will they not help us?”

“I do not know,” Gyda whispered back.

“We can hear you,” said Athelstan, his voice almost as low as theirs.

Gyda uttered a disgusted hrmphing sound, just like the one her mother made. Ragnar nearly laughed.

He led them down a corridor and onto a lift. Only once the doors had closed did he really notice the smell. The two women had made an obvious effort to at least sponge-bathe their faces. It was just as obvious that they hadn't bathed in a week and that it had been longer since their clothing had been washed. Or maybe it was just that their outfits' previous owners had left some rather tenacious smells. Whatever it was, the combination of woman-smell, man-smell, and whatever herbs the two were using to counter the human-smells, was a bit powerful in such a confined space. Or perhaps his nose had grown soft after so long aboard a stjarneskip.

“So,” he said, “what took you so long?”

Gyda exhaled heavily. “It was partly my fault. I leaped to Bifrost while inside Mars' gravity well. It altered our course in ways I hadn't predicted. Maybe I could have, if I'd actually had real navigation training.”

“Did you not have a navicomputer?”

“Of course. But it was having problems. We wound up a hundred and twenty AU away. When we tried to jump again, the shockwave from Sol's nova knocked us off course again and we ended up off the north pole of Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. By then, we had begun to have serious problems.

“Elding Kattegatar was scheduled to undergo a refit. We had just sold and unloaded most of our cargo when we picked up the evacuation order. There was disagreement among the crew, as you might imagine. But two things were clear...we were not getting that refit...and we were going to be destroyed if we tried. So we assisted with the evacuation.

“Some of the crew said the decision nearly cost us our ship and our lives. But it wasn't long before we realized that most of our equipment problems would have popped up anyway. So we had to head into Sagittarius in search of raw materials.

“One thing led to another, and for various reasons, we bounced around the Local Group. We repaired what we could, but in some cases we simply had to cannibalize one thing in order to repair another.”

“Like communications?”

“I take it you tried to hail us.”

Ragnar nodded.

“It didn't take long to recognize the limits to that. We'd all but given up trying to find the fleet. We held several mass funerals, one for each inhabited world that had been in Terran space and a few for anyone who'd likely been between worlds when they'd died. Then we started looking for a habitable world while governing what had become a small city-state and keeping our eyes open for any trace of a Bifrost trail. We even found one of yours a few times, but then lost it again for one reason or another. It was exhausting!”

“We even had to Blood-Eagle someone last month,” said Hallveig. “He screamed like a baby the whole time. We tossed his body into deep space.”

Ragnar cringed. He remembered having done that himself. It had not been pretty, although the subject he'd Blood-Eagled had not uttered a sound. They stepped out of the lift and down another corridor.

“Who does your decorating?” asked Hallveig, gesturing to the walls.

“Oh, that,” said Athelstan. He chuckled. “We had some problems with passengers scrawling graffiti on the bulkheads. It was unsightly, so we painted over it. They graffitied it again. We painted again. After two more rounds of that, it became apparent that we were looking at the same thing the ancient Norse, Inuit, Haida, and others faced during their long, dark winters. A lot of time on their hands, and very little to do. So we decided to officially sanction graffiti under the provision that it be artistic.

“Admittedly, that was vague and there was some backlash over censorship when we tried to define it. Apparently, certain influential persons exerted their influence and the result was this.”

Hallveig and Gyda both made hmming noises. Ragnar realized he hadn't actually looked at the walls in quite some time. The flowing lines of jelling beasts, gripping beasts, Celtic world-trees and knotwork, several kinds of Futhark, all blended together, and sometimes flowing into Pacific Northwest Raven, salmon-trout, and eagle. It was certainly a vast improvement over bare bulkeads.

They entered another lift, its door painted to resemble the gaping maw of a shark surrounded by aquamarine seawater.

“You have no idea where we are, do you?” said Ragnar. It was more of a statement.

Gyda shook her head. “Our long-range sensors are out and our Tactical display has been acting up for months. The only way we even knew this was a Terran warship was that Hallveig saw it through an external viewport. Otherwise, we only knew two things...that we'd fallen off of Bifrost in the presence of a strong gravity well, and that we were about to collide with something large.”

“If sensors are out,” said Athelstan, “how did you come to be here, especially so close to us?”

“Accident,” said Hallveig.

“More or less,” said Gyda. “We ran across your Bifrost trail, then did the math. I was off a little.”

Ragnar chuckled. They stepped from that lift and walked down yet another corridor. Ragnar stopped at a panel a few steps from a lift painted to look like the Green Man of Celtic tradition. He tapped on the screen. “Patch me in to Vice Admiral Ingstad, video feed.” Several moments passed.

He looked over his shoulder. “It occurred to me that there is someone who will be very interested in seeing you.”

A few more moments later, Lagertha's face appeared on the screen. “I was in the middle of a briefing, so this had better be good,” she said curtly.

“This had better be good... _Admiral_ ,” he replied.

Lagertha cocked an eyebrow incrementally, but said nothing. He still loved her, though she was, as always, a force to be reckoned with.

“I believe I will let you be the judge of that.” He stepped aside, and motioned to Gyda.

“Heilsa, mothir,” she said.

Lagertha's face went briefly slack, her gasp audible. “Oh...” she squeaked, her hand reaching toward her own screen on her own ship.

Ragnar grinned. “At your convenience, Admiral, I would like to invite you to dine this evening aboard Orka Mjolnir.”

Lagertha nodded wordlessly. Then, “I...I accept...Admiral.”

Ragnar could see the tears in her eyes even as he broke the connection. He pushed another button. “Loytnant Jarnsitha to the Observation Deck!” Then he motioned to the lift.

A couple more minutes later, they stepped out. Ragnar had barely gone three paces when he heard Gyda gasp behind him. He smiled again.

She rushed past him, Hallveig on her heels, stopping just before the transparent sheeting that stretched from floor to ceiling to opposite bulkhead. She reached out slowly, fingering the inner surface. But her gaze was clearly on what lay beyond.

Against the starfield of Triangulum hung the gas giant they'd named Zeus, its red, cream, and orange bands so like those of Jupiter, two Great Red Spots mirroring each other across the planet's green-tinged equatorial region. Many of its moons twinkled, the leading edge of its ring sparkling as always. The blue-green world they'd named Hera filled much of the field of view, one of its moons drifting across its face.

Ragnar stepped up beside her. “We call it Hera. Do you like it?”

“It...it's beautiful!” she gushed.

“There is plenty of room. I thought it might be a waste of resources to repair your ship, given...this. Unless you wish to continue your journey?”

“ _NEIN!_ ” she shrieked. She cleared her throat. “That...will not be necessary. We will have to discuss some details, of course. I want the best chance for our people. I am sure you understand.”

“Naturally. We will, of course, see to your medical needs. And I will want to speak with your Kaptein.”

Gyda grinned. “You just did.”

Ragnar felt his eyebrows raise.

Gyda laughed. It was the most beautiful sound Ragnar had ever heard. “Surprised?” she asked.

“Your brother will be jealous. He had hoped to break my record as the youngest Kaptein.”

“He still may. You might have noticed that Elding Kattegatar is not a military vessel.”

“It might not matter to him.” He glanced over toward the lift. “But you may ask him yourself.”

Bjorn walked briskly across the space. “Reporting as...” He stopped mid-sentence and gawked at Gyda.

“Loytnant Jarnsitha,” said Ragnar, “may I introduce Kaptein Gyda Ragnarsdottir.”

Bjorn blinked. Moments later, he caught Gyda in a bear-hug. Ragnar had long suspected that his son knew of only the one kind, which was fitting.

“So, my friend,” said Athelstan, “what was that you were saying about your gods hating you?”

**Author's Note:**

> This story could easily have been far longer and I left many gaps for sake of space. I hope I've included, through the expositional bits, enough to imply a lot of what happens in those gaps. If you, the reader, are interested in seeing those gaps filled, please don't hesitate to say so.
> 
> You may have noticed that I spelled some names in two different ways. Jormungandr, for instance, I spelled without the word-final '-r' in dialogue. This is because in Old Norse, many words, including some masculine names, are written with '-r' but when it follows a consonant, it tended to not be pronounced. I suspect this is a phonological rule, so I wanted to reflect that.


End file.
